KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The gov­ern­ment is set to mod­ernise class­room learn­ing from Jan­u­ary with an am­bi­tious dig­i­tal ed­u­ca­tion dri­ve cost­ing tens of mil­lions.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo an­nounced that 18,000 de­vices worth $146 mil­lion will be dis­trib­uted to Form One stu­dents, along­side ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) train­ing for 10,800 teach­ers.

Dur­ing his maid­en bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion yes­ter­day, Tan­coo said $8.766 bil­lion is be­ing al­lo­cat­ed to ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing, un­der­scor­ing the gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus on equip­ping stu­dents and teach­ers for a dig­i­tal fu­ture.

From Jan­u­ary, the eL­E­VATE TT pro­gramme will up­skill 15,000 ed­u­ca­tors, help­ing them mod­ernise teach­ing meth­ods us­ing 21st-cen­tu­ry tech­nol­o­gy. The gov­ern­ment will spend $5.72 mil­lion on this ini­tia­tive, which Tan­coo said will de­liv­er “rel­e­vant, flex­i­ble and mod­ern pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment aligned to na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties and the 2025–2030 Ed­u­ca­tion Pol­i­cy.”

An­oth­er project, the NEXTCLASS pro­gramme, will al­so be­gin in Jan­u­ary to cre­ate an AI-pow­ered plat­form de­signed to en­hance teach­ing ef­fec­tive­ness and per­son­alised learn­ing. Gov­ern­ment in­vest­ment for NEXTCLASS stands at $4.64 mil­lion.

“Every teacher will gain ac­cess to a sin­gle plat­form host­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, fea­tur­ing les­son plan­ning, re­al-time stu­dent track­ing, au­to­mat­ed grad­ing sup­port, and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment tools,” Tan­coo said.

Em­pha­sis­ing in­clu­siv­i­ty, Tan­coo said ed­u­ca­tion must pre­pare every child for a dig­i­tal, fair so­ci­ety. Spe­cial-needs stu­dents now re­ceive ded­i­cat­ed ex­am con­ces­sions, while 13 part­ner schools have been strength­ened with $11 mil­lion in sup­port for fis­cal 2026.

“With UNICEF, we launched uni­ver­sal screen­ing for chil­dren aged four to six to de­tect learn­ing chal­lenges ear­ly,” Tan­coo said.

The gov­ern­ment will al­lo­cate $7.89 mil­lion to the Pro­mot­ing Ear­ly As­sess­ment for Re­silient Learn­ers (PEARL) project, al­so launch­ing in Jan­u­ary. The ini­tia­tive will iden­ti­fy and ad­dress vi­sion, hear­ing, growth, and de­vel­op­men­tal chal­lenges be­fore they hin­der learn­ing.

“The pro­gramme will em­bed uni­ver­sal screen­ing in schools, en­sur­ing dif­fi­cul­ties are iden­ti­fied and ad­dressed ear­ly. Through align­ment of the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion, Health, and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, PEARL will guar­an­tee par­ents and stu­dents a seam­less medi­um of care and at­ten­tion,” Tan­coo added.

Bridg­ing Learn­ing Gaps

Tan­coo said na­tion­wide vi­sion and phys­i­cal screen­ing pro­grammes will con­tin­ue, while a new Lit­er­a­cy and Nu­mer­a­cy Se­ries in 2026 will ad­dress learn­ing gaps. The gov­ern­ment will al­lo­cate $10 mil­lion to mod­ernise net­works in 456 pri­ma­ry schools.

The GATE and High­er Ed­u­ca­tion Loan Pro­grammes re­main key to ter­tiary ac­cess, with 345 bur­saries worth $52 mil­lion award­ed this year. Mean­while, the long-await­ed UWI Debe Cam­pus will be­come op­er­a­tional, of­fer­ing pro­grammes in Law, Foren­sics, IT, and AI train­ing.

Agri­cul­ture will al­so be in­te­grat­ed in­to schools to en­cour­age youth en­tre­pre­neur­ship through the Youth Agri­cul­tur­al Fund.

For To­ba­go, Tan­coo an­nounced a two-pronged ed­u­ca­tion re­form strat­e­gy with im­me­di­ate and long-term in­vest­ments to build a skilled, adapt­able work­force span­ning preschool to ter­tiary lev­els, with an em­pha­sis on spe­cial-needs sup­port.

Start­ing Jan­u­ary 2026, the Na­tion­al In­no­va­tion and In­cu­ba­tor Pro­gramme will sup­port 100 grad­u­ates and as­pir­ing en­tre­pre­neurs through men­tor­ship, fi­nanc­ing, and struc­tured guid­ance. Fund­ed with $15.75 mil­lion, it will be man­aged in part­ner­ship with the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion and UWI Ven­tures Lim­it­ed to pro­mote small and mi­cro-en­ter­pris­es.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, $10 mil­lion will be al­lo­cat­ed to the Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Im­pact (RDI) Fund at UWI to ad­vance stud­ies in cli­mate re­silience, cit­i­zen se­cu­ri­ty, sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, and health in­no­va­tion.

Re­flect­ing on the gov­ern­ment’s first six months, Tan­coo said the Va­ca­tion Re­pair Pro­gramme up­grad­ed 279 schools, call­ing it “one of the most suc­cess­ful in re­cent his­to­ry.”

An­oth­er UNC ini­tia­tive de­ployed 95 spe­cial re­serve po­lice of­fi­cers to 50 high-risk schools.

Tan­coo al­so high­light­ed that the ad­min­is­tra­tion put “stu­dents first” by dis­trib­ut­ing 20,000 book grants be­fore the new school term, en­sur­ing safe class­rooms and a stronger start for chil­dren.